Brian Tashman's blog

Yesterady on “The Savage Nation,” Michael Savage lit into President Obama’s role in the release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the former Taliban prisoner who is now facing chargers of desertion.

Savage claimed Obama is “diminishing the U.S. military” and “permitting the Islamo-fascists to rise,” mocking liberals who believe Obama is a “loyal American” who “loves America.”

“Are you sure of that?” Savage facetiously asked. “Are you sure you haven’t watched the show ‘Homeland’ sufficient to understand that occasionally along comes someone who has not the American interest at heart? Is that possible? ‘Oh no, you right-wing nuts, you have it all wrong, you’re a bunch of racists. How dare you say that about the greatest American since George Washington.’”

According to reports, the woman “was stabbed and had her baby cut from her womb” and the baby later died.

“We’re a murderer state,” Swanson said. “There is so much blood on the hands of this state, it’s hard to live here. It’s hard to live in the state of Colorado because there is so much blood on the hands of our leaders, here in the state of Colorado, and the populace who is so pro-abortion they would not protect this child who was murdered in her mother’s womb over the weekend.”

Yesterday on “Trunews,” Rick Wiles said that American laws designed to “intimidate” Christians are paving the way for violent anti-Christian persecution in the U.S.

“It is coming here,” Wiles said. “There is an ugly spirit of Antichrist rising up in the world, they are attacking Christianity through political and legal means of intimidation but it will escalate to outright violence and bloodshed because it is Satan who is driving them.”

Ted Cruz, one of the U.S. Senate’s most extremeandconspiratorial members, told sympathetic commentator David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network today that he plans to run a “positive, optimistic, hopeful” campaign for president that will stay out of the gutter.

“There may be other candidates who get down and nasty, who get personal, who go into the gutter and launch attacks. I ain’t going to be one of them, and I’m not going to reciprocate,” Cruz said, before clarifying that he does plan to “contrast” his record with that of other candidates. “The Scripture gives us guidance; the word tells us ‘you shall know them by their fruit.’”

When Brody asked the senator if he agrees with evangelicals who “believe that this is a Christian nation,” Cruz said that America was “built on Judeo-Christian values” and “built by people of faith, men and women of faith, who were fleeing persecution.”

Last night on “The Steve Deace Show,” Donald Trump spoke to the Iowa-based host about how this time, he is really serious about running for president. He told Deace that Republicans have failed to stand up to Democratic officials who “don’t know what they’re doing” and “just want to keep taxing.”

“They talk and they continue to talk,” Trump said. “You see this huge flair of talk and then nothing happens.” And if there is one thing the almost-1988, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn’t like, it’s talk without action. If things don’t turn around soon, Trump warned, immigrants may destroy America and the middle class will rise up.

“People are flowing into this country by the millions, not by the thousands, by the millions, and destroying the fabric of the country,” Trump warned. “We’re talking about the highest-taxed nation in the world and the middle class is just getting decimated. I mean, everybody is hitting the middle class and something has to happen because we’re not going to have a middle class or the middle class is going to do something that you and I and nobody else is going to like and who can blame them? They are getting decimated.”

Don Feder of the World Congress of Families greeted Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign announcement at Liberty University by arguing that while “there will never be another” Ronald Reagan, Cruz comes pretty close.

Just like Cruz, Feder said in his column yesterday, Reagan too “alienated the Republican establishment” and had been labeled as “too extreme” and “too flamboyant” by naysayers who believed he had “absolutely no chance of becoming president.”

Feder said that Cruz picked up the baton from Reagan by declaring his bid at Liberty University, citing Reagan’s ties with Liberty-founder Jerry Falwell and his support for the Religious Right movement.

“Ronald Reagan was unique; there will never be another like him,” Feder said. “But like Reagan, Cruz understands the power of an army of passionate idealists — people who aren’t moved by marginal tax rates or the profit margin of the Fortune 500, but by family, faith and freedom.”

Cruz is a throwback to another presidential contender – one who was also "too extreme," alienated the Republican establishment, was too flamboyant (appeared in Technicolor in a monochrome field) and, the pundits assured us, had absolutely no chance of becoming president.

Much has been made of Cruz's choice of a venue to launch his presidential campaign – Liberty University (founded by "televangelist" Jerry Falwell, the media elite sneered) – and his faith-based message. "God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn't done with America yet."

Cruz told the students of this Christian university: "I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America."

On August 21, 1980, Ronald Reagan addressed 15,000 conservative Christians in Dallas. As church leaders, "I know you can't endorse me," Reagan famously told them. "But I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing." Among them was Jerry Falwell.

Reagan said the Bible held the answers to all of America's problems of the day and that if we would only return to that "old-time religion," we could realize the dream of a shining "city on a hill."

Ronald Reagan was unique; there will never be another like him. But like Reagan, Cruz understands the power of an army of passionate idealists – people who aren't moved by marginal tax rates or the profit margin of the Fortune 500, but by family, faith and freedom.

Religious Right activist Richard Land guest-hosted yesterday’s edition of “Washington Watch” where he expressed outrage about President Obama’s remarks on the need for more people to vote, in which he pointed to Australia as an example of a country with compulsory voting.

Land, a former Southern Baptist Convention official who left following a scandal involving plagiarism and racial remarks, brought on Kenneth Blackwell of the Family Research Council to discuss this latest “scandal,” agreeing that it was a sign that Obama seeks to vastly grow the size of government and divide Americans.

“I’m going to use an extreme analogy: he could’ve been Mandela and instead he chose to be Mugabe,” Land said, referring to late South African leader Nelson Mandela and Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, who is notorious for his use of violence against political opponents and white farmers. “He chose Mugabe over Mandela and we’re all paying the price.”

Blackwell, who helped stifle voting during the 2004 election when he served as Ohio Secretary of State, suggested that the government under Obama may soon “order you to have mandatory political party membership.”

After criticizing Obama for “doing away with Election Day” by supporting early-voting, Blackwell claimed Obama is pushing a “devilish plan” to encourage people who are “dependent” on government to vote.

“We now have a president that’s padding the books with illegal immigrants and aliens, giving them drivers’ licenses, saying that they must vote and he’s growing government at the same time,” Blackwell said. “So what do you do? You create bigger and bigger government, more and more dependency and then you tell people they have to vote. Well, if people are dependent on government handouts, who are they going to vote for? They’re going to vote for the party of big government. They’re not going to vote for the party of free markets and liberty. They will sacrifice their liberty to feed their babies. This is part of a devilish plan.”

She also urged President Obama or whoever replaces him to direct the Attorney General to defy the court, just as the federal government should have ignored the Dred Scot ruling before the Civil War.

“We just cannot live in a country where one judge or even five judges are able to change the law of our land that goes against the laws of most of our states and we’ve had for several thousands of years about the definition of marriage, that is simply not our form of government,” Schlafly said. “We believe in ‘We The People.’”

Schlafly said that people need to “speak up and say we’re not going to put up with it” and defy judges who “think they’re God or something.” She also encouraged governors to order officials who issue marriage licenses to disobey the court’s decision.

Farah, who has suggestedinthepast that Obama is ineligible to be president because he was secretly born abroad to an American mother and a Kenyan father, does not seem to have a problem with Cruz, who – unlike Obama – was actually born abroad. Cruz has an American mother and a father who was a Cuban national at the time of his birth.

The champion of the birther cause praised Cruz in a column this week as a Reagan-like leader who could not only win the presidency in a landslide but could also stand “on his own two feet without the assistance of a teleprompter,” which Farah hails as “refreshing after six years of Barack Obama.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard any political figure do what Sen. Ted Cruz did yesterday in his announcement he is seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency.

He delivered an electrifying, motivational, rousing case for liberty – explaining why it’s not too late, why Americans don’t need to lower their expectations, how this country has overcome greater odds in its history.

…

He is going to be a formidable candidate. More importantly, he’s a breath of fresh air for giving Americans hope again – the kind of hope we haven’t had since Ronald Reagan was articulating his vision of national renewal.

He does it standing on his own two feet without the assistance of a teleprompter – also refreshing after six years of Barack Obama.

…

I am not making an endorsement for the presidency here. But I am giving Ted Cruz a big hallelujah, a heartfelt amen.

This is the way I wish other Republicans and conservatives would talk. There’s a reason Ronald Reagan, with similar views, was able to win landslide victories in the 1980s. It’s because he was the Great Communicator. Ted Cruz may be one, too.

…

Unlike most of my colleagues in the media, I like that Ted Cruz denies man-made catastrophic climate change. Why? Because it’s not real. It’s a scam for more government control over the lives of individual citizens. It’s one of the biggest and worst collectivist schemes in history.

Unlike most of my colleagues in the media, I like that Ted Cruz helped shut down the government. I’d like to see much of the federal government permanently shut down to be in line with the limits of the Constitution.

Unlike most of my colleagues in the media, I like that Ted Cruz invoked God and liberty so frequently in his announcement.

I don’t think he’s out of step with mainstream American values. Not at all. I think his message is going to resonate. He’s a serious contender.

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly spoke to Rick Wiles of “Trunews” yesterday about President Obama’s purported mission to “break our country” by implementing the “Karl Marx/Saul Alinsky agenda” and putting “more and more people on the welfare rolls.”

When Wiles insisted that our “mysterious” president was “never vetted,” Schlafly pushed the debunked myth that “we don’t know whether he legally got into Columbia and Harvard Law School,” agreeing with Wiles’ suggestion that Obama may have never even attended college.

She explained that Obama was able to execute this supposed cover-up in part because “people were so entranced with the first black president and they really expected, I think many of the people who voted for him, really expected this to ease the tensions between the races and be a step forward for harmony in the United States, but it didn’t work out that way.”

Schlafly later agreed with Wiles’ assessment that “Obama is deliberately seeking to destroy America” and “agitate” the American people into conflict, arguing that Obama wants to use the welfare system to realize this goal. She even argued, without a hint of irony, that no one who lived during the Great Depression received “handouts” from the government.